PH has every right to ground ships in Sabina Shoal, analysts say

FILE PHOTO: The BRP Sierra Madre, a Navy warship that now serves as military outpost, keeps watch over Ayungin (Second Thomas), located within the country’s exclusive economic zone. Nearby are Chinese coast guard and militia vessels in this shot taken on February 21, 2023, during an aerial surveillance by the Philippine Coast Guard. Philippine Daily Inquirer/Niño Jesus Orbeta

MANILA, Philippines — Local and foreign analysts said on Friday that the country has every right to ground its own vessels in Sabina Shoal as Chinese state media floated such a possibility amid the Philippine Coast Guard’s (PCG) persistent presence there.

Quoting an unnamed source, Beijing-based tabloid Global Times on Thursday said Manila is “effectively forging a quasi-military-grounding” on the shoal as PCG’s BRP Teresa Magbanua continues to stay in the area for more than 45 days.

US-based South China Sea monitor Ray Powell on Friday said China Coast Guard vessel 3303 has been “circling” the “largely stationary” PCG vessel for about ten days now.

READ: PCG sees signs of possible island–building in Escoda Shoal 

Powell told INQUIRER.net in a message, “China is clearly annoyed at the PCG’s presence at Sabina Shoal.”

Powell, the program head of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, said the Philippines has a right to conduct any activities in the shoal, but the country is unlikely to ground one of its two flagship 97-meter patrol vessels there.

“I saw that the Global Times suggested that the Philippines might ground the BRP Teresa Magbanua at Sabina Shoal,” Powell said. “This is just silly — if the Philippines wanted to ground a ship, they would not pick one of their two largest and most modern Coast Guard vessels.”

“The notion that this is a ‘quasi-military grounding’ as they referred to it, is a case of projection since it is China that has perfected the tactic of ‘rafting’ its vessels together to lay claim to features in the West Philippine Sea,” Powell added.

Sabina within PH’s EEZ

PCG began deployment of the vessel in the shoal, which is only 75 nautical miles from the coast of mainland Palawan or well within Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), after Beijing’s suspected reclamation activities there.

“Even if [the Philippines] does indeed ground a vessel at Sabina Shoal, it’s well within its sovereign rights to do so since the feature is located in its legitimate EEZ,” said Singapore-based research fellow Collin Koh of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

Security expert Chester Cabalza, in a message to INQUIRER.net on Friday, also shared the same opinion: “Manila has every right to ground its own vessel to any of its prominent rock or atoll within the EEZ of the Philippines.”

Cabalza, president and founder of the Manila-based think tank International Development and Security Cooperation, further stressed that Beijing has no right to tell Manila what to do inside its own EEZ.

“China has no right to interfere in our own maritime prerogative to increase our strategic interest in protecting the West Philippines Sea as long as we do not interfere in China’s own politics,” he also said.

Cabalza even urged the country to take it further and ground more ships in its other maritime entitlements in the West Philippine Sea.

The government adopted the strategy of grounding its ships to assert its rights in its maritime areas.

In 1999, the BRP Sierra Madre was run aground in Ayungin Shoal to assert the country’s sovereign rights there. The resupply mission for this naval outpost became a flashpoint of tensions between Manila and Beijing.

Beijing asserts sovereignty in almost the entire South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea, even if such a claim has been effectively invalidated by a July 2016 international tribunal ruling from a case filed by Manila in 2013.

“I hope the Philippine Navy will ground more vessels in all three maritime entitlements of Manila,” Cabalza said, referring to Bashi Strait, a strategic waterway between Batanes’ Mavulis Island and Taiwan’s Orchid Island; the Philippine Rise, also known as Benham Rise; and even as far as the Sibutu Channel, or the narrow channel that separates Sulu Archipelago and Borneo island.